Tim Parfitt's Blog
April 30, 2026
Letter from Spain #78
I last posted here on 1 April - April Fool’s Day - and finally return on this last day of the month, only to say that I’m now going to be taking a longer break from Substack while working intensely on my next book, ‘The Malaga Connection’ - the third in ‘The Connections’ series.
April has been a great month - many birthday celebrations, mine and others (I try to string out mine over a couple of weeks) - Easter, calçots, concerts, comedy nights, then a four-night trip to Madrid to promote ‘The Madrid Connection’, then back to Barcelona and my hometown of Sitges for Catalonia’s magnificent Sant Jordi festival - the day when everyone gifts books and roses to one another.
In the middle of it all, I also did an interview about the new book on Talk Radio Europe’s book show, hosted by Hannah Murray. Here’s the audio if you’d like to listen to it:
To anyone who came to the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop event in Madrid (we sold out of books and chairs), or who came to the Sant Jordi stands to get a signed book - thank you so, so much - and I hope you enjoy the books! Please let me know …
A special word of thanks to David Price and Ann Louise Bateson in Madrid - and the Ajuntament de Sitges, the Biblioteca Santiago Rusiñol and the Cymru Catalunya Association for Sant Jordi. Here’s a random selection of photos from the events …
I really admire anyone who can post blogs regularly, religiously here on Substack every week - sometimes daily - but I personally find it very hard to do so while also working on a book.
I don’t know when I’ll be back posting a weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ again - probably not until the autumn, but you never know. I might try and post occasional ‘notes’ instead, or rant on X/Twitter for a while - and I also need to get my own website redesigned and relaunched (if anyone is good at that, please send me a message)!
I now have to spend these coming months immersed with my characters during the Malaga story - and I also want to spend time in Andalusia again myself, as part of my research. I take my research very seriously … so if there are any readers or followers with any good ideas for a cheap & cheerful place to stay in the south of Spain for a few days, weeks or months, please do let me know … ;)
Thanks for reading! Hasta pronto!
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsThe Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
I’ll soon put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
April 1, 2026
Letter from Spain #77
US President Donald Trump said in an interview with the Telegraph today - April Fool’s Day - that he is strongly considering pulling the US out of NATO.
It won’t happen.
It won’t happen in the same way that most things that Trump threatens or promises don’t actually happen. On tariffs, government shutdowns and threats against Greenland, Canada, Panama, the EU - and even Spain (which we’ll get to in a minute) - Trump has a history of backing down in the face of strong opposition or an economic slump.
There’s an acronym for it: TACO - ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’.
It gained prominence last year after Trump launched his ‘Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs’ on imports to the US from everywhere on earth, including from volcanic islands near the Antarctica inhabited exclusively by penguins.
What happened? The markets went haywire, so Trump delayed everything as a way to increase time for negotiations and for stock markets to rebound. Finally, most of these tariffs were significantly lowered, and the US Supreme Court eventually struck down the bulk of the plan in early 2026. I hope the penguins are happy.
They use Trump’s TACO label on Wall Street, where ‘TACO trade’ involves buying stocks cheaply after a presidential tariff announcement pushes stocks lower … then selling them at a profit after the tariffs are delayed or reduced and the market rebounds.
The Times has run an even more sinister article today - ‘Are Trump insiders making a killing on the Iran war?’ - also related to an earlier report in the same paper, where at least half a billion dollars in bets on the oil market were placed minutes before Trump announced that the US would postpone military strikes on Iranian energy targets.
A further investigation by the Financial Times indicated that the Morgan Stanley broker of Trump’s ‘war secretary’ - the Bible-thumping Pete Hegseth - contacted the asset management group BlackRock about investing in its defence fund shortly before the US and Israel attacked Iran.
Trump himself is a businessman, remember. He’s not a statesman. He likes doing deals, not politics. Or at least he likes doing deals when he knows what he’s actually doing …
‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do,’ he has said on several occasions during his bizarre press briefings in the Oval Office or on Air Force One. The same press briefings in which he’s also said ‘Quiet, Piggy’ to a female reporter, or called another one ‘obnoxious’ and a ‘terrible reporter’.
‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do. I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows.’
It’s worse.
Trump himself has no idea what he’s going to do.
Ever since the start of the Iran war, Trump has been sending out confused, conflicting messages: the war is won; the war would be ending ‘soon, very soon’; the war is ‘very complete, pretty much’; the war is not a war but an ‘excursion’; Iran has 48 hours to stop fighting and make a deal; Iran has 10 more days; shipping companies need to ‘show some guts’; Iran should ‘open up the Strait of Trump, I mean Hormuz’ and ‘we don’t need it anyway’ … ‘the US is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our military operations in Iran’. And now today, Trump claims ‘Iran has asked for a ceasefire.’ Iran has denied it, calling it ‘false and baseless’.
Meanwhile Trump has also attacked the UK, ridiculing Britain’s defence forces, particularly the navy, dismissing their aircraft carriers as ‘toys’ - and ‘you don’t even have a navy - you’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work’.
Traditional allies of the US - NATO allies - have been berated by Trump for not joining ‘Operation Epic Fury’ against Iran - then told by him that he doesn’t need them - and then also been taunted as ‘cowards’.
This is the same president - sorry, businessman - who had to backtrack on remarks he made during an interview with Fox News, in which he said of NATO troops: ‘We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan ... and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.’
His words drew condemnation from international allies, while Keir Starmer called them ‘insulting and frankly appalling’. Trump then used his Truth Social platform to praise UK troops as being ‘among the greatest of all warriors’.
I repeat: Trump won’t pull the US out of NATO. It’s just hot air trumping from an orange balloon.
Not only do I believe that the US gain much more by having a seat at the EU’s security table than not, but Trump cannot legally exit NATO unilaterally.
I’ve done my research. Under a 2023 law passed under Joe Biden, a withdrawal would require backing from two-thirds of the Senate or an Act of Congress. What might happen - and what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said - is that Washington may need to ‘reconsider its relationship’ with NATO once the war against Iran is over (if it ever is).
Yes - and NATO might want to also reconsider part of its own relationship with the US while Trump is that country’s commander in chief.
Which brings me to Spain …
Trump has threatened Spain, too, of course. I’ve covered this in previous posts. From criticising Pedro Sánchez and Spain’s contribution to the NATO defence budget, to Spain not allowing US military aircraft to use the air bases in Andalusia (or even Spanish airspace) for any ‘illegal’ Iran operations … Trump has called the country a ‘loser’ and threatened to ‘cut off all trade with Spain … we don’t want anything to do with Spain’. Has it happened? No, of course not … it’s hot air.
One thing is certain: Sánchez isn’t fooled by Trump, and he’s been consistent in his criticism of his foreign policy (at least) since day one.
Regular readers of this blog will already know my opinion of the Spanish prime minister and I’m not going to repeat anything here - at least not in writing. You can listen in instead! This morning I chatted with Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain, in which Sánchez and Trump form most of the discussion. Here’s the link, if you’re interested:
Below, I have some book news and events coming up. April is going to be a busy month for me, but I’ll be back posting on here by Monday 27 April at the latest. In the meantime, I hope you have a great Easter. Thanks for reading (and listening) …
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsTuesday 24 March was a very special day. One of my books, The Barcelona Connection (see below), is on the syllabus at DePaul University in Chicago, as part of the study of the genre of mystery and detective fiction for first year students who specialise in criminology and sociology. That in itself is brilliant - but even more so because their course includes a Study Abroad trip to Barcelona (this year and next) to follow the trail of the book on a tour called ‘The City is a Mystery’. Their trip also takes in the Dali Museum in Figueres.
I am honoured to be in great company, too - as the only other book on this course is the superb ‘Shadow of the Wind’ by the late Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Their course notes state: ‘an epic gothic mystery and a modern thriller that follows the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art’ - ‘texts rich with history, sociological themes of racial and socioeconomic injustice, and reflections of criminological theories ...’
Last Tuesday, 18 of the students and two professors visited me in my hometown of Sitges and took me to lunch after a tour of the museum here. We had a long, great discussion about the book, the process of writing, the genre of crime and fiction in general ... and then they all wanted their copies signed.
MADRID EVENTOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
SANT JORDIThis year’s Sant Jordi in Catalonia (Thursday 23 April), I am going to be signing books during the day in Sitges, at the Ajuntament de Sitges stand and also the Welsh-Catalan Association’s stand. If you are in Sitges, please come along and say hello!
BOOKSThe Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
I’ll soon put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
March 15, 2026
Letter from Spain #76
Many years ago, when my ex-wife and I were bringing up five noisy kids in Suffolk, England, we sometimes spent Sundays visiting friends who also had noisy kids. They would come to us; we would go to them. It was that sort of life.
One couple in particular - let’s call them Arabella and Tristan, because that was exactly the sort of bohemian, gently hippy-dippy Sloanes they were - had three noisy kids of their own.
Tristan, an investment banker in pink trousers (though I always suspected he really wanted to be a novelist or playwright), was enormous fun for about half an hour, but not much longer.
Arabella, by contrast, was usually rather morose and quiet, drifting about in a long burgundy frock from the Boden catalogue and deeply absorbed in her wild garden and herbs. She also had a habit of bringing jars of something fermented to other people’s houses.
Visits to their place inevitably involved being dragged into games in the big garden. Wooden sword fighting. Five-a-side football. Egg hunts. Face-painting. Their faintly theatrical kids were often dressed as if they’d wandered out of some minor Shakespeare play.
Tristan, my sons always complained, was far too competitive at everything - tackling too hard in the football, swinging the wooden swords as if it were Agincourt - leaving the toddlers in tears. Meanwhile Arabella drifted somewhere between the herb beds and the kitchen, still in that burgundy frock.
All the while I was quietly wondering when Tristan might open another bottle of wine. If any at all.
And then, at dawn on Monday, Tristan would bugger off to London for the week. Arabella never seemed curious to go and discover what Tristan might actually be doing there.
Anyway, spending time at Arabella and Tristan’s house was like spending time with Agnes and Will Shakespeare in my local cinema watching Hamnet on Friday night.
I couldn’t wait to go home.
I think it was the daisy chain on the head of the little actor playing Hamnet that did it.
And perhaps the fact that Agnes seemed to spend the entire film in what looked suspiciously like Arabella’s burgundy Boden frock.
And then there was the moment when Agnes finally goes to London to see what Will has been doing.
For anyone that doesn’t yet know, Hamnet is based on the excellent novel by Maggie O’Farrell and tells the story of Agnes and her life with William Shakespeare. Jessie Buckley plays Agnes (or Anne Hathaway), with Paul Mescal as Shakespeare. It also follows the short life of their young son, Hamnet (played by Jacobi Jupe). I’m not spoiling the movie for anyone by saying the story eventually revolves around the death of young Hamnet at the age of 11 from the bubonic plague.
Eventually is the key word.
It’s what eventually happens in the movie - but it had lost me long before that happened.
Look, I get what the movie is about: motherhood, grief … and specifically losing a child, which must be hell on earth. I get all that. I also get the connections it tries to show between Hamnet (son) and Hamlet (the play) - at least the ones that historians have told us.
Grief is the entire point of the whole movie. I get it. I’m not dismissing anyone else’s feelings about it. Some people might have experienced deeply personal connections with the film. I didn’t. Maybe it’s because I knew the grief was coming (but had to wait until nearly halfway through), and then I also felt it was being forced down my throat.
Just because I wasn’t moved by it, it doesn’t mean I don’t have any feelings. I cried during Toy Story. I can weep at anything. I lost my dog Molly in November and that still makes me cry.
People relate to movies in different ways. For me, I watched it as a film that has been nominated as this year’s Best Picture - and I don’t think it deserves to win that award against the other films I have seen (see below).
I simply found it … boring and pretentious. I think the two leads had zero chemistry, and Mescal as Shakespeare was totally unconvincing. The little actor playing Hamnet, a Prince George lookalike - was also too rosy, too Peter Pan, too round-cheeked and annoying for me.
Until the final scene, when Agnes finally goes to the Globe theatre in London to see Hamlet, I was bored out of my mind. Finally we were going to see some real Shakespeare, but it turned out to be a farce. While the long scene tried to show the manifestation of Will’s grief for his deceased son, I had to stifle my laughs looking at the faces of all the extras. The movie’s renowned casting director, Nina Gold, should definitely get an Oscar for finding the weirdest-looking folk she could find.
I like films to take me to another world, but Hamnet simply took me back to Tristan and Arabella’s wild garden - their wild, weird kids, the herbs and fungi and that Boden burgundy frock. I just wanted to go home.
To be, or not to be Best Picture? That is the question. No way, I’d say.
So … of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture, I finally managed to see seven of them. In past blogs, I gave my opinion of Sinners and Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value and Train Dreams. I have not seen Bugonia, F1 and The Secret Agent.
From the movies that I have seen - I’m sure I’ll be wrong - but here goes:
I believe One Battle After Another should win Best Picture. I also think both Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn in that same movie should win the Best Actor and Supporting Actor awards. I think the director, Paul Thomas Anderson, should also win.
I believe Renate Reinsve should win Best Actress for Sentimental Value.
I loathed the movie Sinners, but I think Wunmi Mosaku will win Best Supporting Actress for her role in it. I think Ryan Coogler will also win Best Original Screenplay for Sinners.
And despite everything I have written above, Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell might get the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamnet. I wish them well.
Oh, and Spain’s Sirat might win Best International Film. I haven’t yet seen it and need to …
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
I’ll soon put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe. I am doing so again this Weds 18 March.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
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March 9, 2026
Letter from Spain #75
I had brunch with two of my sons in Barcelona yesterday. Then we stumbled upon an International Women’s Day rally making its way down Passeig de Gràcia. We stopped and watched.
Standing opposite Gaudí’s iconic Casa Batlló, I took a photo of a lady holding up a banner that said ‘No a la guerra - again’ (‘No to the war - again’). Seeing me take photos, she swivelled her placard around to show me the other side: ‘No guerras’ - ‘No wars’.
No wars at all … not just the Iran war.
It got me thinking. People often say that if women ran the world there wouldn’t be any wars. Would that really be true?
You might immediately reach for a few familiar names - Cleopatra, Queen Isabella I, even the mythical Helen of Troy. Historically, though, very few wars were started by women. That may simply be because for most of history women were rarely given the opportunity to start wars in the first place. For centuries, men were the ones declaring wars, financing them, profiting from them, and then writing the history books afterwards. Even so, I do think there would be fewer wars if women were in charge.
Anyway … ‘No a la guerra’ was the phrase that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also used last week to respond to Donald Trump.
Sánchez was reviving the Spanish left’s historic slogan - ‘No to War’ - that dates back 23 years, to February 2003, a month before Iraq was invaded. Huge demonstrations had swept across Spain, with more than three million people protesting against the military intervention being prepared by George W. Bush and supported by the Spanish government of José María Aznar, leader of the right-wing People’s Party (PP) at the time. In the end, the ‘No to War’ phrase also gave the left an unexpected victory at the polls.
Last week Trump had been slagging off Spain, calling the country a ‘loser’, and threatening to impose a trade embargo after the current Spanish government led by Sánchez refused US military aircraft the use of bases in Andalusia for attacks on Iran.
I touched on this in last week’s blog, when I was simply trying to compare Spain’s RTVE with the BBC, and then Sánchez with Keir Starmer … but I don’t think I explained myself very well.
From a couple of messages I received, I also realise that not everyone is a fan of Sánchez. That’s perfectly fine - each to their own. Like him or not, however, he has the courage of conviction to stand up for what he and his socialist party really believe in - unlike the dithering, U-turning, ‘not Winston Churchill’ Starmer in London, who also received a bollocking from Trump last week. The difference is that Starmer seemed upset by it; Sánchez couldn’t give a toss what Trump thinks about him (which annoys Trump even more).
To clarify something: Sánchez opposes the war in Iran, yes, but that doesn’t mean he has any sympathy for the Iranian regime - one of the most despicable regimes on earth.
No one in the Spanish government, or in Spain more broadly, has any sympathy for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or any other figures in the regime who have been blown to pieces and left in piles of rubble. Thousands of Iranians have also been celebrating.
But as satisfying as it is to see these women-hating, terrorist clerics slowly being eliminated, the Spanish government’s opposition to the war itself is essentially right.
In addition to telling Trump that the position of the Spanish government can be summed up with the words, ‘No a la guerra’, Sánchez also said in a televised address: ‘This is how humanity’s great disasters start … You cannot play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions.’
He called on the United States, Israel and Iran to halt hostilities ‘before it is too late’.
Summarising his government’s stance, he said: ‘No to the bankruptcy of international law. No to accepting that the world can only resolve its problems through conflicts of bombs. And finally, no to repeating the errors of the past.’
In other words: Iraq.
And he spelt it out. ‘The Iraq war led to a more insecure world,’ he said.
I’d go further. All recent interventions in the Middle East have been followed by chaos rather than any orderly transition to democracy.
Just because ‘international law’ is toothless, irrelevant, ‘woke’ (whatever you want to call it) ever since Putin started his war against Ukraine, this Iran war is not even legal under US law, nor based on any interpretation of a UN mandate. It’s also a war of choice, not of necessity.
One thing is precision targeting to blow up the Ayatollah and his sick cronies. Another thing is an American Tomahawk missile hitting an elementary school and killing 175 people, most of them young girls.
There was no imminent threat to the US from Iran’s nuclear or missile programmes. Trump consulted no one but then demanded cooperation - and nor had he exhausted diplomatic negotiations with Iran before resorting to military action.
The biggest danger to the world right now is an unhinged US president making decisions on the fly, egged on by a very persuasive Benjamin Netanyahu, surrounded by sycophants and ignoring any formal process of decision making even within his own country.
Why should Sánchez not be allowed to disagree with the US and Israel? I’m simply pleased that he’s not as gullible as other leaders.
Going back to the lady in my photo holding the ‘no wars’ sign during the rally in Passeig de Gràcia yesterday … what’s that got to do with International Women’s Day, you might ask why?
It’s not just being ‘anti war’. According to the United Nations, women in conflict-affected regions are also disproportionately exposed to gender-based violence. Those rallying throughout Spain yesterday also expressed solidarity with women affected by wars in Ukraine, Iran, Gaza and elsewhere - and with women in Afghanistan.
‘We stand in defence of peace and of all the women of the world,’ Spain’s Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz told the press at the rally in Madrid. ‘It is within our power to stop the war, to stop the barbarity, and to win rights. We proclaim ourselves in defence of peace, in defence of the Iranian people, in defence of Iranian women.’
Here’s to women everywhere. And here’s to no more wars.
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
I’ll soon put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain. Here’s the audio from Weds 4 March …
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
March 3, 2026
Letter from Spain #74
There was no sign or sound of Tourette’s at the Spanish Oscars - the Goyas - on Saturday night. And Spain has also banned the USA from using its airbases here to bomb Iran.
How do Tourette’s, the Goyas and Iran fit together, you might ask?
They don’t. Unless you won an effing Goya for an effing film about effing Iran (which someone probably did).
No - I’m simply highlighting a few contrasts. Between the BBC and Spain’s national broadcaster, RTVE. Between Keir Starmer and Pedro Sánchez. And a word about Susan Sarandon’s barely concealed admiration for the latter.
Let’s begin with effing Tourette’s.
On certain occasions, I myself have been guilty of loud, uncontrolled and inappropriate vocal sounds - particularly while on hold to speak to a human being at a Spanish bank.
But I have genuine sympathy for anyone living with Tourette’s - especially if they find themselves sitting next to a live BBC microphone at the BAFTAs, which is precisely what happened a couple of Sundays ago.
John Davidson, who has a severe form of Tourette’s, was attending the gala because the biopic I Swear - based on his life as a campaigner raising awareness of the condition - was in the running for several awards.
During the ceremony, Davidson involuntarily shouted out the n-word when two black actors - Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo - were on stage, presenting the special visual effects award.
Yep … someone with a disability shouted something racist and the BBC failed to bleep it out. Producers for the BBC indicated that the reason was because their team was ‘working from a truck’ and ‘failed to hear’ it.
What the BBC did manage to edit out of their broadcast, however, was part of a speech by My Father’s Shadow filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr, in which he dared utter the words: ‘Free Palestine’. So … the n-word broadcast; ‘Free Palestine’ edited out.
It was a shitshow, really … but it wasn’t John Davidson’s fault. He has since described feeling ‘mortified’ by what happened and said in an interview with Variety that the BBC should have ‘worked harder’ to ensure his racial slur was not broadcast - and he’d even expressed concerns that his seat was far too close to a microphone.
This is a man who, in 2019, cried ‘f***ing parasite’ at Charles and ‘f*** The Queen’ when receiving his MBE for improving our understanding of his condition. According to Davidson, The Queen didn’t flinch. I imagine she’d probably heard much worse from Prince Philip.
Hollywood royalty should also forgive Davidson.
Look - there’s nothing amusing about living with a disability. Nor was there anything remotely amusing about two black actors being subjected to a racial slur in a room supposedly devoted to celebration. But there is something darkly comic about the choreography of it all - almost like a Ricky Gervais script.
An awards ceremony determined to signal virtue and inclusion, proudly showcasing a film about Tourette’s, thoughtfully inviting the real-life inspiration along to the gala - and then discovering, live on air, that the very condition being honoured doesn’t politely conform to their broadcast etiquette.
And then came the uniquely British aftermath. All the BBC and BAFTA luvvies tying themselves in knots, apologising to everyone and then clarifying and reframing those apologies, because they couldn’t quite work out who to apologise to. They first apologised to black audiences, then to Tourette’s sufferers for the tone of the apology to black audiences, then to Davidson for the microphone placement, then to the public for not editing out the racial slur, promising that an ‘executive complaints unit’ would complete a ‘fast-tracked investigation’ into the incident … while a black British film-maker resigned as a BAFTA judge over the handling of it all. It goes on and on.
Meanwhile … RTVE’s broadcast of the Goyas - this year held in Barcelona. Almost the opposite took place. No Tourette’s, for starters. No emergency compliance summits. No executive units sprinting anywhere.
As for ‘Free Palestine’?
By all means, señoras y señores.
Badges were everywhere. ‘Free Palestine.’ ‘Stop Genocide.’ And we also had the Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon (wearing her Palestine badge) swooning over Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez before and during the gala. I can’t imagine any Hollywood actress swooning over Keir Starmer. I can’t imagine anyone swooning over Keir Starmer.
‘Handsome and tall,’ Sarandon said of Sánchez.
‘Whenever I have seen him, he has been on the right side of history and also said it in a very clear way,’ she said, describing him as ‘handsome and tall’.
In Barcelona to receive a lifetime achievement honour at the Goyas, she praised the Spanish government’s support for Gaza, saying that Spain was ‘on the right side of history’ and ‘doing an incredible job’.
‘When you turn on the TV and see how strong Spain is and how clear you are morally on these issues, it makes you feel less alone,’ Sarandon said.
The star of Thelma and Louise called Spain’s position ‘so important’ in the United States, which she described as ‘a place where you feel repression and censorship’.
Sánchez has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s war on Gaza, becoming the most senior European leader to refer to the conflict as a ‘genocide’. He is also one of the only European leaders with the cojones to stand up to Donald Trump … and has now refused US military aircraft the use of airbases in Spain for attacks on Iran.
And yet again, while writing this … I see the breaking news that Trump has suddenly hit back.
‘Spain has been terrible,’ Trump has just said, adding that he has asked his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to ‘cut off all dealings with Spain’.
‘We don’t want anything to do with Spain.’
Right now, I don’t think Spain wants anything to do with Trump either …
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
I’ll soon put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain. Here’s the audio from Weds 25 Feb …
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
February 23, 2026
Letter from Spain #73
In 1993, when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was still Prince Andrew, I had dinner in Madrid with his soon-to-be ex-father-in-law, Major Ronald Ferguson.
‘Soon-to-be’, because it was shortly after a Texan millionaire had been photographed sucking Sarah Ferguson’s toes while she sunbathed topless at a villa in St Tropez. This Texan was apparently her ‘financial advisor’. Perhaps the world should have learnt more from it at the time.
Ronald Ferguson had come over to Madrid to referee the annual Spanish Vogue polo tournament that I’d set up while running Ediciones Condé Nast. The night before, I took him to Casa Lucio - one of Madrid’s finest establishments - and treated him to their speciality of huevos estrellados. He was a nice enough guy. A bit grumpy, a bit pompous - okay, very pompous - but what do you expect?
Over dinner, I didn’t mention his daughter’s toes. Nor did I mention a News of the World story about his membership of a London massage parlour staffed by girls who wore ‘starched white medical gowns’ and allegedly offered à la carte sexual services. Perhaps the world should have learnt more from that at the time, too.
Anyway, he had fun refereeing the game at Madrid’s Club de Campo and the Spanish prensa de corazón loved it. But therein lies part of the problem: we needed a polo ‘celeb’ like the galloping major and several others in order to get press coverage for the Vogue Polo Cup, keeping our clients and sponsors happy along the way. No one was interested in the polo itself.
23 years later, in June 2016 in London, I found myself sitting on a table adjacent to a very loud Sarah Ferguson - at a charity dinner at the Masterpiece Art Fair in Chelsea, to be exact. There was a painting that she had collaborated on being auctioned among other items - for the charity Children in Crisis. At least I hope it was for a charity.
Fergie was shouting at guests to ‘bid higher’ - a bit like Geldof’s ‘give us yer f**king money’ (which he actually never said). She caught my eye and started gesturing at me, in a sort of grasping, money-grabbing, ‘get-your-wallet-out’ way. Then I think she quickly realised she was wasting her time with me, beckoning the wrong (and empty) wallet.
Therein lies part of the same problem: the organisers needed a gimme-yer-money royal ‘celeb’ at this charity event in order to get us guests to … hand over our money. Except me, as I have none.
I’ve never met Andrew, thank God.
However, I’ve met enough of these so-called ‘trade envoys’ and their civil-servant flunkies over the years to picture Air Miles Andy as being one of the very worst.
According to the UK Gov site, there are currently 32 Trade Envoys covering 73 markets across 6 continents who ‘engage on substantial trade opportunities identified by government’.
No, they don’t.
Although membership of the trade envoy ‘programme’ is cross party from both the House of Commons and House of Lords - and although it is ‘voluntary and unpaid’ - I believe most of them are just freeloaders.
In addition to these so-called ‘trade envoys’, there are often ‘relations’ ministers, delegates or attachés. Also freeloaders.
We don’t need them. Bang goes any hope I ever had of an MBE …
Over 30 years working in Spain (on and off), I’ve seen my fair share of cronies from the ‘UK Trade and Investment’ (now the Department of International Trade) coming over to Spain on a jolly. To do what, exactly? Promote marmalade? Whisky? Stilton cheese? Paddington effing Bear? Prior to the London 2012 Olympics, we even had a whole delegation come over to Barcelona to ‘learn about the Catalan capital’s success and legacy from the 1992 Olympics’. I think all they did was drink.
I kid you not … we had another one over just last week. The UK’s so-called ‘EU relations Minister’. They wouldn’t need an EU Relations Minister if they hadn’t voted for Brexit. He was visiting Spain, ‘where he raised important issues for the British expat community’. Bollocks, he did.
During his two-day visit, the EU Relations Minister apparently ‘reaffirmed his commitment to work with Spain on issues of mutual interest’, the official email I received from the British Embassy summarising the trip read. Among other things, ‘the Minister visited Madrid’s Mercado de La Paz to highlight opportunities for British food exports to Spain, and sampled some Stilton cheese which he heard is a hit with expats and locals alike’.
Golly gosh, well done. How much did the trip cost?
‘A key focus of discussions included the UK and EU’s work to agree a new food and drink trade deal by 2027. This will make it significantly easier for British expats to purchase UK products and bring produce home when visiting family and friends.’ FFS … who really needs this?
Now imagine Air Miles Andy in such a role … a ‘royal’, a ‘celeb’ and ‘trade envoy’ all in one. What do you get? An arrogant, freeloading scumbag who sleeps with 72 teddy bears and is unable to function without a valet, a chef and a butler, who’d ‘arrive late and only talk to the young women and then leave early’. No one dared criticise him ‘because he was royalty’ and ‘the official line was that, of course, he was doing a wonderful job.’
Not only did he spend 10 years on his worldwide jolly as the UK’s ‘Special Representative for International Trade and Investment’, but it seems he was passing on all details of the trips to his paedophile chum Epstein - who in turn brokered other arrangements and, according to one account, ‘skimmed some cream off the cake’.
The latest insult, according to ‘whistleblowing retired civil servants’ in a BBC report, is that Andrew also charged taxpayers for massages while working as a trade envoy.
One former civil servant has said he ‘regrets that Andrew was allowed to get away with expenses for a massage, when it might have been a chance to check his behaviour’.
‘I can’t say it would have stopped him, but we should have flagged that something was wrong,’ he said.
Something went wrong way before he was putting his massages on expenses … it all goes back to those toe-sucking days.
While writing this, I’ve just seen that Peter Mandelson has also been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. What took them so long?
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
In my next post I’ll put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
February 9, 2026
Letter from Spain #72
This week, I’m just going to update my thoughts on the Best Picture category of the Oscars.
Since last week’s post, I’ve watched Frankenstein and Sinners - which means I’ve now seen six of the 10 movies nominated for the top award. Four to go, including Hamnet, which could sway everything.
Firstly, I really do admire anyone who can write, direct and get a film produced - let alone have it nominated for any award - so my opinion about any film is just my opinion (obviously). But for what it’s worth, here’s my view on Frankenstein …
Well, Frankenstein is not my type of genre.
I’m not a fan of fantasy (or sci-fi). Years ago, I walked out of one of those Lord of the Rings or Hobbit jobs after 30 minutes, leaving one of my sons to enjoy it with all his friends on his birthday while I spent the time in a nearby bar. Same thing happened (same bar, too) with a different son and one of the Harry Potter films. Goblins, elves, gremlins, hairy wizards … not my thing.
I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies because I have no interest in them at all - and I always loathed Dr.Who and Star Trek on TV as a kid. I’m not a spaceship or ‘time travel’ fan - but that’s not to say I dislike the ‘unknown’ or ‘supernatural’ genre.
I loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind - and Aliens (because my talented brother-in-law is Lieutenant Gorman) - and I also like it when this genre doesn’t take itself seriously. I loved ET, for example.
But Frankenstein … ?
I don’t know what to say. It took me two nights to watch it on Netflix. I had to force myself to continue with it on the second night. It started okay … the opening scenes were very good … but then I just thought that it got very … silly. And too Disney-ish. I laughed at a couple of moments that weren’t supposed to be funny at all.
Should it get the Best Picture Award at the Oscars? No. Should Jacob Elordi get an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role? No, I don’t think so - not being up against Sean Penn or Stellan Skarsgard in One Battle after Another and Sentimental Value.
What I did end up enjoying - more than the film itself - was the 40-minute documentary on Netflix about the making of Frankenstein, which I was prompted to watch immediately after. That was fascinating. My guess is that the movie will probably get its awards for Costume Design, and probably Make Up / Hair.
Okay, here we go … Sinners.
WTF?
I know I’m late to this party. Sinners landed in theatres across the USA last Easter and soon became the highest grossing original film in the past 15 years, and the 10th-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. It’s already made over $370m for Warner Bros at the box-office alone, and on a $90m budget.
I sat down to watch it in good faith. I really did. We even invited a couple of friends round to make it a ‘movie night’. Tapas, wine, log fire, phones on silent … no talking if possible until after the movie (but that was impossible in the end).
I’d heard a lot about the film beforehand and was open to being challenged, provoked, unsettled, even enlightened. Instead, I emerged two hours and 17 minutes later, thinking: what a load of crap.
I freely admit that I might be the problem. You’re probably thinking the same by now. I can hear you mumbling as you unsubscribe from me here on Substack: ‘He’s just an old fart who’s never seen Star Wars and walked out of The Hobbit and Harry Potter on his poor sons’ birthdays …’
Sinners might be one of the highest grossing original films of all time, but it’s also one of the most over-praised and over-hyped movies of all time. In my opinion.
I’m not saying Hollywood has lost the plot. Warner Bros obviously hasn’t. Not if they can take that risk and make that profit.
Set in the Deep South during the Great Depression, Sinners follows the Smokestack Twins, both played by Michael B. Jordan, the Black Panther director Ryan Coogler’s frequent collaborator. Great talent combined … but either something went wildly over my head (it’s possible), or I’m out of touch. Or both.
How is it possible that this film has been nominated for 16 Oscars? Seriously?
I’ve got nothing against horror or vampire movies. In my hometown here, we have the annual Sitges Film Festival dedicated mainly to that genre … but I’ve walked out of some better films that Sinners over the years.
Sinners is a vampire movie.
The critics claim Sinners uses its vampires as a ‘cultural metaphor’, allowing the movie to explore several ‘historical themes’.
No, Sinners is just a vampire movie.
Sinners is also mediocre, at best. It’s a mediocre vampire movie, in which - without really spoiling anything - you have to wait until the last third of the film for any of the gory vampire bits. And that is probably the only thing that’s really clever about it - because it doesn’t stick to the rules of one particular genre. In that sense, it’s bold and original. For the first half, it is pretty much a realistic period adventure. Then it gets weird. Some of the characters’ eyeballs go red and then the biting starts and the blood squirts from their necks and it becomes a crazy bloodbath. But why? What’s the story? You tell me.
There are some good scenes - and there’s some great music, for sure - but it’s not worthy of 16 Oscar nominations. 16?
‘At a time when Black heritage and culture are once again under intense political assault’, Sinners provoked ‘zeitgeist-y discourse around Black history, cultural erasure and entertainment industry politics’ according to The Guardian. Yeah, right …
I don’t only watch movies for entertainment, or to be taken to another world for a couple of hours. But I don’t always need a history lesson or sermon, either … and especially not from a vampire flick.
All these deep complex metaphors that they claim Sinners is about … ‘tackling real-world issues’ … ‘portraying immigrant culture through spiritual liberation, religion and colonialism, where biblical symbolism shows vampirism as a metaphor for inherent exploitation and blues music through resistance and resurrection’ … give me a break.
It’s a mediocre vampire movie that has made tons of dosh at the box-office. Best of luck to it … congratulations to all concerned … but it is not a ‘masterpiece’.
It is not ‘one of the best films of this generation’ (box-office aside), or ‘the best of the decade’, or a film that ‘defines this era’.
So … from what I have seen so far, this is my Best Picture list order updated:
One Battle After Another
Marty Supreme
Sentimental Value
Train Dreams
Sinners
Frankenstein
Still to watch: Bugonia, F1, Hamnet and The Secret Agent before 16 March.
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
Past posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
In my next post I’ll put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsOn Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
February 2, 2026
Letter from Spain #71
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told Elon Musk to f*ck off last Wednesday. He didn’t actually use that term, but I bet he was thinking it. Whenever I think of Musk, I also think f*ck off.
Elon-effing-Musk had posted one of his ‘Wow’ comments on X, which he owns, while sharing some far-right bullshit that described the Spanish government’s plan to grant legal status to around 500,000 undocumented migrants as ‘electoral engineering’.
‘Spain just legalised 500,000 illegal aliens to “defeat the far-right”,’ a far-right ‘influencer’ called Ian Miles Cheong wrote.
‘It’s not even a secret anymore,’ he went on. ‘By legalising 500,000 illegals under the guise of defeating the far-right, Pedro Sánchez is essentially dropping the mask. This is electoral engineering. The logic is simple: legalise half a million people, fast-track them to citizenship (which takes as little as two years for many), and you’ve effectively imported a massive, loyal voting bloc that’s indebted to the left.’
‘Wow,’ said Elon-effing-Musk … who’s also the founder of aerospace firm SpaceX, all part of his long-term ambition to send humans to Mars …
‘F*ck off,’ thought Sánchez (I’m absolutely certain of it). But then he wrote this response to Musk instead: ‘Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.’
It’s one of the reasons I admire Sánchez (he’s stood up to Trump more than anyone else, too) and one of the many reasons to add to the long list of why I love living in Spain.
I’d rather live in a country that plans to legalise 500,000 people (some of who possibly risked their lives trying to get here), than a country that sends ICE thugs to murder innocent citizens protesting against their own government’s immigration policies.
Here are the facts:
Yes, Sánchez’s left-leaning coalition government is planning a decree to allow up to 500,000 undocumented migrants to regularise their status, marking a clear departure from the tougher migration policies adopted in other parts of Europe.
This regularisation will apply to migrants who have been resident in Spain for at least five months and who submitted applications for international protection before 31 December 2025. If they have no criminal record, they can apply for a renewable one-year residency permit. Based on data regarding the main nationalities of foreign arrivals over the last two years, it appears that the majority of beneficiaries will come from Latin America.
Sánchez has repeatedly argued that immigration has strengthened Spain’s economic growth and increased public revenues. With Spain grappling with an ageing population and a persistently low birth rate, he says migrants play a crucial role in supporting the labour market and safeguarding the pension system. The figures suggest he is right. The country’s economy grew by 2.8% last year, more than double the average growth forecast for the eurozone.
According to Sánchez, migration has driven around 80% of Spain’s economic expansion over the past six years and now contributes roughly 10% of social security income.
‘Spain will continue to defend a migration model that works, one that works for Spain and could also help awaken an ageing Europe,’ the socialist (PSOE) leader said while addressing a meeting of Spanish ambassadors in Madrid last month.
Now … as effing-Musk suggests, is granting legal status to 500,000 ‘illegal aliens’ electoral engineering?
No, it isn’t.
They’ve been trying to say that Sánchez is looking for votes in the next general election that must be held in Spain before 22 August 2027. But guess what? None of these ‘illegal aliens’ will be allowed to vote in that election.
The electoral law states that Spanish citizens of legal age, registered in the electoral census, have the right to vote. To do so, though, one must hold Spanish nationality, a process entirely different from regularisation, which does not confer nationality.
Once people acquire legal residency (regularisation) in Spain – which in itself can sometimes take years bogged down in the application process – it allows them to participate in municipal / town elections, but only if their country has an agreement with Spain.
If migrants are from Latin America, the Philippines or Equatorial Guinea, they would be able to apply for Spanish citizenship after living legally in Spain for two years, which would then allow them to participate in all elections.
However, having residency in Spain is not the only requirement for later obtaining Spanish citizenship, even if someone wants to apply. There are many other requirements. The minimum waiting period is also not two years for all applicants.
Many migrants with residency never apply for Spanish citizenship because, in most cases, it implies renouncing their original citizenship. It’s true: I have never applied for Spanish citizenship because I don’t want to give up my British passport. I can vote in my home town’s elections, but I can’t vote in the Catalan regional elections or in Spain’s general elections.
What about Spain’s social services being overwhelmed? What about the ‘pull effect’?
Obviously the opposition parties in Spain - the right-wing People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox lot - have strongly criticised the government’s plan to grant legal status to half-a-million undocumented migrants … but now let’s look at their main arguments.
Firstly, this isn’t just the socialist-led government of Sánchez doing this. I mean, it’s been done before. Two ‘extraordinary regularisations’ of this kind were previously initiated by the PP itself (in 2000 and 2001) and another four were carried out by the PSOE (in 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2005).
The PP has said that this regularisation could overwhelm social services. Is this true?
No, it’s not true. The people who will be eligible for regularisation have already been living and even working undocumented in Spain for more than five months (as explained above). Therefore, these migrants are already here; they could already be using municipal services and healthcare. They were already consuming products and paying taxes on them, but their lack of documentation prevents them from contributing to social security.
To put it simply, they’ve probably been paid in cash (if paid at all) for whatever they’ve been doing here. The measure could bring around 500,000 people into the system, which will have a direct impact on the economy.
Vox - of course - warn that the mass regularisation will act as a magnet for further illegal immigration. Will it?
No, I don’t think it will. People arriving from now on don’t meet the requirements and would not be able to automatically regularise their status. Reports also illustrate that there’s no evidence that these measures created a ‘pull factor’ after previous regularisation processes.
The facts and figures show that Spain is still maintaining controls against irregular entry (despite the far-right saying otherwise) while also promoting regulated, legal immigration.
It’s true that irregular/illegal arrivals in the Balearic Islands rose in 2025, where most crossings originate from Algeria. But overall in 2025 illegal migration to Spain dropped sharply, with arrivals falling by more than 40%, driven mainly by a steep decline in crossings from West Africa to the Canary Islands (which fell by 62%). And that’s because Spain also signed cooperation agreements with several African countries that are major sources of illegal migration, aimed at dismantling people-smuggling networks.
Sánchez himself has repeatedly argued that reducing illegal migration requires tackling the issue before migrants set off.
He’s right … but does this stop the likes of Elon-effing-Musk and co spreading their bullshit?
Wow, no.
‘The tyrant Sánchez hates the Spanish people,’ Vox leader Santiago Abascal ranted on Musk’s X. ‘He wants to replace them. That’s why he intends to create a pull factor by decree, to accelerate the invasion. He must be stopped. Repatriations, deportations, and remigration.’
Update on the Oscars watchlist …Further to my post last week about trying to watch as many of the films nominated in the Best Picture category before the Oscars, we went to see Marty Supreme on Friday.
What can I say? It was noisy. It was a wild, screwball nightmare, to be honest. Many moments were simply absurd.
Timothée Chalamet is a great actor - clearly. But I didn’t warm to his character Marty Mauser at all. In fact I hated him, so I didn’t care what happened to him. The bathtub and dog scene was terrific - but then the plot continuing with the dog was just too much. I felt exhausted by the end of the movie, and I was pleased once it was over.
So … does it deserve the Best Picture award? Not for me. Best Actor? Chalamet will probably get it, but I preferred DiCaprio in One Battle After Another.
From what I have seen so far, this is my Best Picture list order:
One Battle After Another
Marty Supreme
Sentimental Value
Train Dreams
Still to watch: Sinners and Frankenstein this week - then somehow Bugonia, F1, Hamnet and The Secret Agent to watch before 16 March.
For those who are interested …The Madrid Connection - Research & Images (2)
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.
I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!
In last week’s post, I mentioned about my time spent in the Prado Museum in Madrid (where the story in the book starts), somewhat amazed that I hadn’t been arrested while casing the joint.
The Prologue of The Madrid Connection starts with a ‘Prado by Night’ event. These are normally public events and free. I think during 2025 the museum opened its doors for free on the first Saturday of most months, from 8.30pm to 11.30pm. In my novel, however, it is a private event for patrons, sponsors, suppliers and ‘friends of the museum’.
As I wrote last week, I lost count of how many times I visited the museum - and specifically Rooms 2 through to 7A - making notes on the ‘floor plans’ that I collected. These visits were not ‘Prado by Night’ events; they were simply the ‘free access’ periods that the museum offers: from 6-8pm, Mon-Sat, and from 5-7pm on Sundays. I used to turn up just before 6pm and join the back of a long queue outside, thinking that I’d never get in - but the queue always moved quite quickly from 6pm onwards.
Anyway, in the book’s Prologue I have two characters following the same path I often followed through the museum, leading to Rooms 7 and 7A on the first floor, where a Caravaggio painting hangs on the far wall. This painting is not named in the Prologue, but because it’s on the front cover of the book, I might as well do so here.
It is David and Goliath - yet the Prado call it two different names: in English, David with the Head of Goliath - and Spanish, David vencedor de Goliat (David triumphant over Goliath). It is the only painting by Caravaggio in the Prado. It is also one of three versions of David and Goliath that Caravaggio painted; the other two are in Vienna and Rome.
Here’s an anecdote. The first time I went to the Prado in search of this painting - already knowing that I wanted to use it in my book, I reached the gallery where it was supposed to be and instead found an empty space on the wall. It was missing. Stolen? No, the guard told me it was undergoing restoration work. But for me, that was a good sign - a message!
The painting is now in Room 7A, but it wasn’t always there. It used to be in Room 6, and it was moved to another room when the museum held a temporary exhibition of Ecce Homo, ‘the lost Caravaggio’ that also gets a mention in the book.
In the adjacent Rooms 2 - 6, there are five sets of double French window doors, four of which overlook a courtyard just one floor below - the ground floor - where there’s an outdoor Café Prado alongside the main entrance to the museum (more on this Café Prado in future posts). Every time I went to Rooms 2 - 6, the wooden shutters on the French windows were open, and there was only one steel bar that could be fixed to the base of each set of doors, yet leaving the glass windows without any bars across them.
I once asked a female guard if they closed the wooden shutters at night. She looked at me suspiciously, but then smiled and told me that she didn’t know for certain as she wasn’t the ‘last to leave’ the gallery - but she didn’t think that they did.
I became quite obsessed with these French window doors with their ‘Juliet balconies’ while researching the book. Their proximity not only to the priceless paintings that hung just inside (including the Caravaggio), but the almost touching distance to anyone at the Café Prado outside …
Here you have some text from the Prologue and just a few of the many images I took during my research …
Next week I’ll post some notes and images of the Chapter 1 research and my experience of the Casa del Campo, plus the Italian Embassy in Madrid.
PS … you can purchase The Madrid Connection here (and The Barcelona Connection here) … or you can simply order them from your local bookshop … ;)
At night, the Prado Museum in Madrid belongs to the paintings. Once the public has gone, the museum sinks into a heavier stillness; the galleries feel older, and they seem to watch each other in a private, unbroken vigil.
On this night, however, that hush was fractured by the soft chatter of a reception in the Goya rotunda – a sound that thinned as a young man stepped away from the main crowd, a silent authority pacing one step behind to keep him on the path already chosen for him.
This season’s first invitation-only ‘Prado by Night’ event was a modest affair – a scattering of patrons, sponsors, suppliers and Amigos del Museo mingling in one of the main galleries – but it was enough. It was meant to strengthen relationships, mark another year of working together. For most guests, it was about the wine and the canapés – with the occasional selfie, angled carefully to avoid the paintings, as museum rules required. For them, it meant the opposite – slipping clear of the small talk, away from the glassy smiles. It meant space to walk, to look, to move without questions.
They eased away from the laughter and the clink of glasses, drifting into the quieter wings, through the half-empty galleries that had been opened for the night. Italian Renaissance portraits glowed under the warm lights, Flemish paintings hung in sombre rows, the Spanish masters held court with their saints and kings.
By the time they came to the rooms displaying Italian Baroque, the air felt cooler, as if the museum had closed itself around them. They turned a corner into another gallery. The figure behind him slowed, giving the faintest nod towards the wall ahead …
… He didn’t answer. But in his head, he was already mapping it out – one floor up, the painting so close to the tall French doors, their pale, canvas-like screens filtering the streetlights and the night beyond into a ghostly blur. No shutters. No grill. Glass not too thick.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsThanks to everyone who made it along to the Come In Bookshop event in Barcelona last Tuesday!
Here’s another date for the diary: on FRIDAY 17 APRIL I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid. More details to follow in due course.
The Madrid ConnectionPast posts on research and images for the book:
Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.
Published on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
January 26, 2026
Letter from Spain #70
I didn’t need to catch a train in Catalonia over the weekend, which was a good thing as there weren’t any. The entire Rodalies commuter network (and regional trains) were suspended from 1pm on Saturday ‘until the safety of passengers could be guaranteed’.
Presumably passengers’ safety was finally guaranteed by 6am this morning (Monday), as that’s when the trains started running again, albeit ‘gradually’. Then at 6.30am they were suspended due to an ‘incident’. More exactly, an incident that took place at the Centralised Traffic Centre run by Spain’s rail infrastructure manager, Adif, which is based at the Estació de França in Barcelona.
Then … wait for it … just after 7am, it was announced that services would gradually restart again, but it was short-lived. Another incident hit the central control centre and, at 7.30am, all trains were suspended again … finally only running from around 8.15am, as far as I know. By then, many commuters had given up.
That’s what it’s like here at the moment. It’s chaos. It’s an embarrassment. It’s ‘third world’, according to the commuters who are suffering every day.
Adding to the chronic lack of investment in the Rodalies rail network, the collapse of a wall near Barcelona during last week’s storm that resulted in the death of a trainee train driver - all coming just days after the high-speed train tragedy in Andalusia that claimed 45 lives - everyone is now blaming everyone else. The three-day mourning period that I wrote about last week is well and truly over.
You know things are bad in Catalonia when you have Carles Puigdemont - the former Catalan president who fled to Belgium after the failed independence bid in October 2017 - saying that things were better when he was in charge.
The regional Catalan government has today called for resignations at RENFE (Spain’s national rail operator) and at Adif (the rail infrastructure manager). The Catalan Esquerra Republicana (ERC) party has called for the resignation of the central Spanish government’s Transport Minister, Óscar Puente - as have the right-wing PP and far-right Vox parties on a national level … but that’s really because they’re incapable and unwilling to hear his lengthy explanations and updates about the initial investigation of the Andalusian train tragedy. Right now, being transport minister in Spain has to be the worst job in the world.
Sometimes the news - and the weather (Storm sodding Ingrid now being followed by Storm effing Joseph) - is just so depressing that I have no desire to write about it or comment on it. But if you really want to hear more about the recent news in Spain, there’s an audio below of my latest chat on Talk Radio Europe about last week’s train tragedies.
As for the United States government … don’t get me started. Do they take us for fools? How dare they deny what is crystal clear from multiple videos taken by witnesses and verified by trusted media outlets? Those ICE ‘police’ in Minneapolis are nothing but killers - murderers. The US president … with his so-called ‘Board of Peace’ set to turn the Gaza Strip into a Trump Tower-style Riviera … has no ounce of credibility left. He’s vile, period.
So, let’s change the subject …
Let’s go from one extreme to another: the Oscars.
Every year, before the Oscar ceremony takes place, I aim to have watched as many of the films nominated in the Best Picture category as possible. Of the 10 films in the final list this year, I have so far seen only three: One Battle After Another (on Netflix), Sentimental Value (at the cinema) and Train Dreams (on Netflix). How many have you seen?
We’re off to the cinema this Friday to see Marty Supreme - then I have Sinners to watch on HBO and Frankenstein on Netflix - but that still leaves Bugonia, F1, Hamnet and The Secret Agent to watch somewhere before 16 March. Hopefully I’ll be able to do so - although I’m not too bothered about missing F1 …
Of the three movies in the Best Picture category I’ve seen so far, One Battle After Another wins hands down. I loved it. I thought it was a bit weird - the second half seemed like a different movie to the first half - but I still loved it. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn are superb - both deserve Oscars in their categories.
Sentimental Value was … okay … but it was a bit slow. The cinematography was striking, but it hasn’t been nominated in that category. I didn’t see it as a ‘Best Picture’ movie. Watching it in its original Swedish (and half of it English) with Spanish subtitles didn’t help, I don’t think. But what I mean by that is that I felt it was more ‘Best International Film’ category … but maybe I’m wrong to think/write that. I think the lead actress, Renate Reinsve, was excellent - she deserves her nomination - but I don’t understand Elle Fanning getting a supporting actress nomination.
As for Train Dreams … I watched it on Netflix last night. I don’t really understand why it has been nominated as Best Picture at all.
For those who are interested …
The Madrid Connection - Research & Images (1)
After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to regularly post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the book, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those past posts can be found below.
I now intend to do the same with The Madrid Connection - again, just for those who might be interested!
To kick things off, you might want to read a previous Substack post about the time I spent in the Prado Museum in Madrid (where the story in the book starts), somewhat amazed that I hadn’t been arrested. In the acknowledgements of The Madrid Connection I also write this:
When I lived opposite the Prado Museum in Madrid during the late eighties, I used to plan how to rob it – for fictional reasons, of course. So, I think my research for this book started back then – 37 years ago.
Over the last two years, I lost count of how many times I ‘cased the joint’, specifically Rooms 2 through to 8A, as well as the outdoor Café Prado in the courtyard. A number of guards and other staff at the Prado always eyed me suspiciously, and they would have caught me staring up at their CCTV cameras and making detailed notes of their positions …
For fun - well, and to help promote the book! - I have even started to create short ‘teaser’ videos that will depict various chapters and/or passages in the book - and I will share them here over the coming weeks and also on Instagram (@tjparfitt) and TikTok (@tjpspain) - where you can also follow me.
I don’t really understand how TikTok works at all, but I’m learning! And if you know any ‘BookTok’ reviewers who might like to read any of my books - please let me know!
Next week, I’ll post some photos here that link to the ‘Prologue’ section in the book. In the meantime, here’s the first 14-second video I made last week to kick things off …
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain. If you’re interested, here’s the chat we had last week - on Weds 21 Jan. There was only (and sadly) one topic: the train tragedy.
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsTo anyone in and around Barcelona, come along if you can to this ‘Chit-chat with Author’ event at the Come In English Bookshop on Tuesday 27 January (tomorrow!) at 6.30pm. You don’t need to have bought your copy of ‘The Madrid Connection’ from the shop - in fact you don’t need to have bought it from anywhere! We’re simply going to have fun chatting about it, and it would be great to see you there. The shop says it would be best to register via the QR code or via this link.
Another date for the diary: on FRIDAY 17 APRIL I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid. More details to follow in due course.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 November 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
January 19, 2026
Letter from Spain #69
Just a short post this week.
The Spanish government has declared the country is in official mourning for three days - from midnight tonight until midnight on Thursday.
At the time of writing this, it has been confirmed that at least 39 people lost their lives after two high-speed trains collided in Andalusia on Sunday evening - a death toll that is likely to rise.
Authorities are currently focused on attending hundreds of distraught family members, asking many of them to provide DNA samples to help identify victims. There is also a fear that more bodies will be discovered once the wreckage of the trains is finally removed.
Various Spaniards who had loved ones on the trains have posted messages on social media saying they are unaccounted for and pleading for any information.
43 people remain in hospital - 39 adults and four children. One of the children and 12 adults are in intensive care. Since yesterday, 79 people have already been discharged.
The high-speed trains collided near Adamuz in the province of Córdoba at 19.45h local time on Sunday, about an hour after one of them - an Iryo train, partly owned by Italy’s state-owned railway company - departed Málaga for Madrid with 294 people on board in eight carriages.
The other train, an Alvia - run by RENFE, Spain’s national railway operator - had left Atocha station in Madrid at 18.05h and was heading to Huelva in Andalusia. It was carrying 184 passengers in four carriages.
At 19.45h, carriages 6, 7 and 8 of the Iryo train came off the tracks close to a set of points near Adamuz. Within 20 seconds, the oncoming Alvia train collided with the derailed carriages. The Alvia train’s front carriages left the track, falling four metres down an embankment.
Investigations are currently underway about the cause of the tragedy - and I am not going to speculate on anything here on Substack.
Human error has already been ‘practically ruled out’ by the president of RENFE. He told Spanish public radio RNE that both trains were under the speed limit of 250 kph; one was going 205 kph, the other 210 kph. He also said: ‘If a train driver makes an incorrect decision, the system itself corrects it. Let’s not speculate; let’s wait for the investigation.’
Spain’s worst train accident this century occurred in 2013, when 80 people died after a train derailed in Galicia. An investigation concluded the train was travelling at 179 kph on a stretch with an 80 kph speed limit when it left the tracks. That stretch of track was also not for high-speed trains.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pledged to ‘get to the truth’ about the cause of Sunday’s accident in Andalusia. ‘We are going to find the answer and determine the origin of the cause of this tragedy with transparency and clarity,’ he said in a statement to the media in Adamuz.
Meanwhile, he said: ‘Society demands two things from institutions: unity in grief and unity in response.’
Spain has spent decades investing heavily in high-speed trains and currently has the largest rail network in Europe for trains moving over 250 kph, with more than 3,900 kilometres of track.
The network is a popular, competitively priced and safe mode of transport. RENFE said more than 25 million passengers took one of its high-speed trains in 2024.
Iryo became the first private competitor in high-speed to RENFE in Spain in 2022.
I have travelled on Iryo trains a lot. I always use them for travelling from Barcelona to Madrid and back. It has always been a great train - clean, efficient, reliable, spacious - a great service and not expensive. Over the weekend, I even booked a return Iryo ticket to travel to Madrid on 16 April until 20 April for a book event. I will not stop using them.
Watching, reporting and covering the news of this tragedy during all of today, my heart goes out to all those affected - and for the many families, relatives and friends still searching for news of their loved ones.
Next week, I will start sharing details and images from my research for The Madrid Connection - much as I did (below) for The Barcelona Connection.
A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain. If you’re interested, here’s the chat we had last week - on Weds 14 Jan. We talk about Julio Iglesias, blackface, new rental restrictions and Costa del Sol burglars …
Books, Reviews, Research, News & EventsTo anyone in and around Barcelona, come along if you can to this ‘Chit-chat with Author’ event at the Come In English Bookshop on Tuesday 27 January at 6.30pm. You don’t need to have bought your copy of ‘The Madrid Connection’ from the shop - in fact you don’t need to have bought it from anywhere! We’re simply going to have fun chatting about it, and it would be great to see you there. The shop says it would be best to register via the QR code or via this link.
Another date for the diary: on FRIDAY 17 APRIL I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid. More details to follow in due course.
The Madrid ConnectionPublished on 26 November 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).
Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:
Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.
They chose a Caravaggio.
And they chose last night.
On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.
British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.
Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.
Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.
As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.
Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.
Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.
As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.
Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.
The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection .
As with The Barcelona Connection below, I’ll be posting more details about the research behind The Madrid Connection over the coming weeks - together with many photos taken in Madrid of the locations in the book.
The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.
Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …
The Barcelona Connection - Book & ReviewsA murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …
Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.
Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.
Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.
From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …
If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.
Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.
A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.
‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’
‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’
A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’
‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’
Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’
‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & ReviewsEighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.
It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.
If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.
As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …
A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in MadridThe hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …
In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real ‘real’ Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull’s testicles.
Tim Parfitt’s rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain’s glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn’t a clue what they’re on about.
You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.
Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:
‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)
‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)
‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)
‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)
‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)
‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)
‘Don’t miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)
Spanish editionA Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.
Contact DetailsYou can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk
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